The trope derives from the ancient concept of "Princess and Dragon", where The Hero must save a woman from an invading monster. This is usually used as a metaphor for real-life conflict.

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Sometime after the arcade era, it became a Dead Horse Trope. While video games still feature the occasional princess in peril, rescuing them is only part of the overall plot; either that, or it's covered by the Grandfather Clause. In his book Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, Chris Kohler credits this progress to some Girl Gamers who wrote to Nintendo in The '80s to say they were tired of saving princesses; Nintendo eventually announced they'd stop using it as a final goal except in the Super Mario Bros. series. The trope's inversion, Princess Protagonist, where the princess is the main character, has grown in popularity as a way to keep making games about princesses while avoiding these criticisms.

This plot has become quite a popular target for variants and newer references to it in popular culture can be classed with Pac-Man Fever. For a similarly overused plot, see Fake King.

Majora's Mask has a kidnapped princess that is the basis for reaching the first dungeon. However, you can finish the game without needing to free her from her prison.

Both The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and its sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, are kicked off with the kidnapping of a young lady — your sister in the first, and the actual princess in the second; much of the story centers around their rescue. In both games, though, the plot carries on well after you've saved the ladies in question.Four Swords also has very little plot beyond this.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks both averts and lampshades this. While Zelda's body is stolen, she, in spirit form, sticks with Link. When she realizes there's a Big Bad to be defeated, she promptly tasks Link with the entire task, claiming that sitting around and waiting for the hero to rescue her is a "family tradition". Soon after, though, they discover that Zelda can be useful in combat and they work as partners from then on.

A variant occurs in ICO. Rather than the hero fighting to get to the princess, both the hero and the princess are prisoners in the same castle, so they work to escape together. Played straight near the end of the game when the queen captures Yorda and Ico goes to rescue her.

Shining Wisdom's first half is basically just to save Princess Satera, who gets kidnapped, turned into a swan and replaced with an impostor. The rest is stopping the destruction of the world.

Subverted in For the Frog the Bell Tolls. Initially played straight when the protagonist hears that Princess Tiramisu has been kidnapped by Delarin. However, it becomes apparent later in the game that no one really knows where she is. At the end of the game, Mandola, the witch who had turned everyone into frogs, reveals herself to be Tiramisu.

Action Game

The first two Ninja Gaiden games on the NES has Ryu defeating some form of Cosmic Horror to Save the World while also saving the CIA agent Irene Lew, who becomes his girlfriend at the end of the first game. In the third game, Irene is presumed dead in the beginning but is alive and doesn't require rescuing.

Fat Princess turns this into a Capture the Flag game, with the goal being to get to the opposing team's base and carry their princesses back to their side. You can hinder the progress by feeding the Princess cake, which will have her grow fatter and becoming heavier to carry.

"The Prince Gilgamesh wore golden armor and attacked monsters to save Ki in The Tower of Druaga." In this case though, Ki (pronounced "Kai") is not actually a "princess" per se, she's a shrine maiden in service to the goddess Ishtar (who lends her name to the game's sequel, "The Return of Ishtar").

Somewhat gender inverted in the fact that Gil is a prince and Ki is apparently a commoner.

The goal of Penguin Adventure is to find a golden apple to restore the health of the penguin princess. Because of Guide Dang It!, it's easier to get the bad ending in which she dies.

In King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human, the Oracle of Llewdor first lets "Gwydion" know about about the three-headed dragon terrorizing the faraway land of Daventry, and the young princess sent as its latest sacrifice. The Oracle then drops the second bombshell (she's his sister, meaning he's the lost prince), and the third (his name's not Gwydion at all).

And subverted in-universe in King's Quest: The Floating Castle, when both the Big Bad and the princess he's holding captive think Alexander has this in mind, when he's really just there to save his father's soul. (Though he does rescue her anyway, both because she can help him out and because it'd be rude not to.)

Red Steel featured its One-Man Army hero tearing through the machinations of the Yakuza in an international battle to bring down their new, more violent and corrupt leadership, learning legendary sword techniques along the way, after they kidnapped his fiancée and killed her father, the previous and attempting-to-go-legal Yakuza leader at their engagement announcement dinner.

Shadow of the Wool Ball has you fight your way through the entire cat army and eventually visit the gloomy cat planet in order to rescue your imprisoned girlfriend.

Light Gun Game

Time Crisis has the President's daughter as a hostage of the bad guys who must be rescued.

In World of Warcraft, a quest charges you with saving the dwarven princess Moira Bronzebeard from the emperor of the dark dwarves. It turns out she's pregnant with said emperor's child and doesn't want to be saved...

While she's not exactly a princess, the Elysion arc of Elsword involves rescuing the El Lady, a goddess in human form.

Also Daisy in Super Mario Land, one of the few games where Bowser isn't present. Apparently he only got a license to kidnap Peach.

Super Princess Peach inverts the trope - Bowser jacked the Vibe Scepter and sends his minions in to use it to paralyze THE ENTIRE CASTLE in emotional distress, using the chaos to imprison THE MARIO BROTHERS (arguably one of his smartest moves in some time)! Peach was Late to the Tragedy, and thus puts it on her shoulders to bail the brothers out.

Averted in Yoshi's Safari where Princess Peach isn't kidnapped at all and serves to deliver Mario and Yoshi the news that her friends King Fret and Prince Pine were captured by Bowser and Jewelry Land's jewels were stolen.

In Super Mario 3D World, Peach is now a playable character alongside Mario, Luigi and a Blue Toad. In her place, however, are the seven Sprixie Princesses, who Bowser bottled before snatching away.

This is the initial premise of Eversion. She becomes a monster and eats you in the bad ending. In the good ending, she still becomes a monster, but you become one as well so no big deal.

Done in an antiheroic way in Wario Land: The Shake Dimension, where saving the queen is only Wario's secondary goal, with him being promised treasure at the end. In fact, at the end where Queen Merelda congratulates Wario, he stops her in the middle by grabbing her and tossing her out of his way.

At the end of Earthworm Jim 2, it appears that "having defeated the nefarious Psy-Crow, our hero, Earthworm Jim, has won back the heart of the lovely Princess What's Her Name." Except she's a cow wearing a costume. So is the villain. So is Jim.

The main plot of the first Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers game on the NES is to rescue Gadget. This notably doesn't start till after you've beaten the first level where the goal is to find a lost kitten (which it turns out was Fat Cat's way of distracting you), and the game goes on for three more levels after you rescue Gadget.

This is inverted in the PC game version, where Chip and Dale spend the game collecting screws so that Gadget can finish the Ranger Plane and rescue Monteray Jack from Professor Nimnul.

The Clonk level "Dragon Rock" plays this unashamedly straight, right down to the evil mage-with-a-dragon doing the kidnapping. In "Tower of Despair" it's the king, and the dragon itself is the capturer, but otherwise it's pretty much the same.

Nefariousinverts and subverts this trope. Instead of playing The Hero to save the princess, instead you're Villain Protagonist Crow, who's attempting to kidnap them. Meanwhile, Crow's usual nemesis ends the intro stage all but stating that saving the princess isn't worth the effort. In both endings, Mayapple ends up saving herself - either as The Stinger, or to take over the Hero role in the True Final Boss.

In The Legend of Kage, the title character has to rescue the kidnapped princess, Kirihime.

Inverted in the browser platformer Sugoi Princess Ushiko. In the game you control the sugoi princess Ushiko in attempt to save the prince Benedick III.

You're saving El Presidente's Daughter in Guacamelee!, but it's effectively the same trope. You're also unable to save her from being sacrificed for the Big Bad's master plan, and whether you can revive her or not depends on whether you got the Golden Ending.

Buster: I'll fight the evil empire army all by myself. While I'm doing that I'll also manage to save Princess Babs. (Babs Bunny walks on)Buster: Wait a minute, Princess Babs? You mean I have to rescue you again?! Babs: That's right. Buster: Well hurry up then. The show's getting ready to start. Babs: Okay. Time for me to get captured.

In Akane the Kunoichi, Akane's objective is to rescue her samurai lord (who she's also in love with).

Milon's Secret Castle: Technically, you are actually trying to save a queen, but it's the same principal.

The first Knightfall game has the protagonist literally drilling his way to Hell to save his princess girlfriend from the Devil.

The goal in Castlequest is to rescue Princess Margarita from Groken Castle.

Kickle Cubicle for the NES actually has four princess to rescue, one at the end of each of the lands.

A minigame/side-quest in Catherine involves playing a game-within-a-game at the Stray Sheep called Rapunzel. In it, you solve block puzzles much like the ones in the "Nightmare" segments of the main game, except there's no enemies, and instead of a time limit you have a limited number of moves with which to make a path to the top of a stack of blocks so your Prince Charming character can get to the titular Rapunzel.

Gender-inverted in Rescue The Prince - the protagonist, Princess Selene, must venture across unknown lands in order to save fifty different princes who are being held captive by five wicked dragons.

Real Time Strategy

Lampshaded in Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, in one mission you must fend off the alien attackers from Princess Rhianne Burke's personal palace, Mission Control tells you that "You have a Princess to save, Commander."

Role Playing Game

Dragon Quest I essentially has only two objectives: Save the Princess, and kill the Dragonlord. Unlike most Save the Princess games, however, you actually rescue the princess from a dragon (usually the first one you kill) in the Marsh Cave long before you beat the Big Bad.

Final Fantasy IX: Zig-Zagged at the start; your task is to kidnap Princess Garnet, but when you confront her, she actually requests the kidnapping - making it clear this is more of a rescue mission. Later dialogue with Regent Cid reveals that he had commissioned the kidnapping as a cover for the rescue, as taking Garnet away openly would cause quite a political stink.

Much later, Queen Brahne orders Garnet's execution, and Zidane and the rest of the party must storm the castle to find her before it's too late.

Final Fantasy X: At one point Yuna, daughter of High Summoner Braska - a princess in all but title - is kidnapped by the Corrupt Church and kept in the castle-like (and gigantic) Bevelle Temple. Oh, and she's forced to marry Seymour. The party arrives to intervene. Subverted when Yuna reveals she was using the wedding to try and Send Seymour, already had an escape planned, and the party's intervention has royally screwed up her plan by giving the villains hostages.

Final Fantasy XII: To recruit Ashe - your fifth permanent party member, and you guessed it; a princess - you have to cross an enemy's heavily-guarded airship to reach her cell after she'd been taken into custody a good 3-4 game-play hours ago.

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light begins with the king telling Brandt, the first Player Character, to save his younger daughter Aire from a witch. When she is rescued (with no small amount of complaining), however, the rest of the kingdom is put under a curse that kicks ff the plot.

There is a mission in Valkyria Chronicles where your squad has to quite literally save the princess after a kidnap attempt.

Your first real goal in Knights of the Old Republic is to rescue Bastila from the swoop gang that recovered her from a crashed escape pod and is now offering her as a prize in an upcoming swoop race. Then, two-thirds of the way through the game, Malak captures her... (Of course, the movie whose universe KotOR is set in had Save the Princess as a good chunk of its plot as well.)

Oh, so very, very much subverted in Live A Live: Orsted sets out to rescue his princess bride-to-be in an opening obviously inspired byGhosts 'n Goblins. By the end of the chapter, she thinks that his friend was the only one who truly deserved her, even though he's turned evil, and commits suicide so that the two of them can be together forever. This leads to Orsted becoming a demon of pure hatred and the Final Boss.

Your first real objective in Chrono Trigger is to retrieve the girl who has fallen through a time warp; and sure enough she turns out to be a princess. Subverted in that when you get back, you're put on trial for kidnapping her in the first place. You end up having to dive through another time warp in order to evade the guards, and that's where the real adventure begins.

In Faria, the first mission you receive is to rescue a princess from a tower. However, you can't marry her because you're a girl. Moreover, this princess is a fake, and you find the real princess in a later tower.

In A Witch's Tale, Liddell must save all six princesses before she can meet Queen Alice.

In Dark Soulsof all things, while it's not the main focus of the game (or even mandatory for that matter), you can rescue Princess Dusk of the fallen kingdom of Oolacile when you find her imprisoned within a crystal golem. To show her gratitude, she teaches you a variety of the unique illusion-based spells of her kingdom. The trope was played even more straight in the 'Artorias of the Abyss' DLC adventure when you are dragged back in time to Oolacile itself, where your ultimate objective is to rescue Dusk again, this time from Manus, Father of the Abyss.

In Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse, the caliph's daughter, Princess Kara, goes missing shortly after the start of the game. After being rescued, she marries the protagonist (although the two were already in love and engaged when she went missing, so it isn't a straight case of Rescue Romance or Standard Hero Reward).

The main subplot of the Greenhorne region in Miitopia is to save its Princess, whose face has been stolen by the Dark Lord.

Shoot Em Up

Your primary goal in Abadox is to enter a planet-devouring parasite to rescue a princess (the PC's girlfriend in the Japanese original) who was inside a ship the monstrous being had eaten. Genre conventions were presumably why they felt the need to dangle the "Save The Important Lady" carrot in front of the player, even though "Save The Galaxy from an Enormous Planet Eater Trying to Consume It" is already pretty good motivation.

Survival Horror

In Resident Evil 4, Leon pretty much spends the entire game going through the Big Bad's trap-filled castle, fighting off undead minions, so he can rescue the President's daughter, Ashley. At the end of the game, Ashley offers him a lot more than just a Smooch of Victory, but given he's part of the secret service in that game, that would obviously not have been a good idea, and he rightly turns her down.

Almaz: I must save the princess! Sapphire: *Groin Attack* Almaz: The princess! She touched me! I can die happy now...

Disgaea 3 also looks at it more seriously with the reasoning behind its Inversion: Princess Sapphire has seen far too many people go off and die all in the name of protecting her. So she became a Pretty Princess Powerhouse capable of destroying anything that might kill a hero.

The Cursed Memories take involves Axel kidnapping Taro and Hanako as bait for the 'wild tribesman' Adell so he can "rescue" Rozalin.

Towards the last part of Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, there are four barrier maidens who must be de-brainwashed and rescued before the Big Bad devours them to replenish his life energy. Three of them are princesses: Marth's big sister Elice, Minerva's little sister Maria, and Marth's ally/Linde's protector Princess Nyna of Archanea.

In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, Starting in Chapter 10, one has to find Princess Julia... in classic style she's in another castle every time previous castle is conquered... this lasts until the final part of the final chapter, where she's That One Boss hanging out in the group's way. (Note that she's That One Boss who can't be killed (or the game will become practically Unwinnable- she's needed for the Final Boss fight.)

In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones Princess Eirika is the main character of the first several missions, and is at least initially most concerned with saving herself. Depending on what route is taken there may also be a mission where Princess Tana must be rescued.

In addition, after getting to safety and saving Tana, Eirika sets out on a quest to save her brother making this 'Save the Prince'. Except that, in the end, he's the one who rides to her rescue. And in the meantime, she saves another Prince... Tana's brother Innes. And then Ephraim saves all of them.

In Fire Emblem Awakening, Prince Chrom and the Shepherds must first rescue the noblewoman Maribelle (the best friend of Chrom's sister Lissa and one of Chrom's prospect girlfriends). Then they must save Chrom and Lissa's older sister, Exalt Emmeryn, twice. The first time, she's fine. The second? Nope. And last but not least, they rescue and recruit Princess Say'ri.

In Shining Force 2 the Shining Force must rescue Princess Elis from Dark Sol. But in The Sword of Hayja, the trope is inverted and the object is to rescue Prince Nick.

While technically not a princess (unless you count her as one for being the daughter of the Fey clan's leaderess), poor Maya Fey in the Ace Attorney series has to be saved from death four times! The first two involve Maya being accused of murder and you have to get a not guilty verdict to save her. The third occasion has Maya kidnapped by an individual who uses this as leverage to force Phoenix into taking a case. The last case has Maya being trapped on a freezing mountain. And things just get worse from there...

Examples from other media:

Anime & Manga

A literal example in One Piece during their Big Damn Heroes, when Luffy and Pell emerge from the sky to save princess Vivi after Crocodile drops her.

In a Save the World climax of Mahou Sensei Negima! main objective was to free Asuna (revealed at this point as a princess of a fallen magical kingdom). Anya even lampshades that for Negi rescuing her is most important, and saving the world is just a bonus. Through zigzaged in that there seems to be more familial than romantic feelings between them (and he is even related to her).

Subverted in Magic Knight Rayearth. Turns out the real mission is to kill the princess at her own bequest.

In Revolutionary Girl Utena, as far as Utena is concerned,this is what she's doing for Anthy alias the Rose Bride. She's not: in reality she's treating Anthy like a prop to feel good about herself. She shuts down when she realizes it, and only after she recovers from that slump, she can truly give Anthy the chance to save herself.

Played for Laughs in episodes 4-5 of Dog Days. The fact that the princess of Biscotti was kidnapped isn't the issue (the world of Flonyard has specific rules regarding the capturing a head of state, and she isn't actually in any danger). The fact that she's an Idol Singer and has a concert in an hour and a half on the other hand...

Fan Works

Subverted in A Game Of Castles. Mario thinks that Peach needs saving, but she doesn't. Her kingdom is aware that she's with Bowser as a royal guest after she mysteriously turned up in the Koopa Kingdom.

Shanghai Noon revolvs around a group of Chinese imperial guards being sent to America to pay ransom for their captive princess. However, after seeing how Chinese immigrants are treated in America (along with her Arranged Marriage to a homely man back home) makes the princess not so eager to return.

Literature

In the Mars and Venus self-help books, a story is told about a knight who saves a princess from a dragon and feels validated for doing so. Then he goes off on an adventure, and she gets attacked by yet another dragon. Only this time, she tells him that the sword won't work and that he'll have to use a noose to slay the dragon. He feels discouraged at the celebratory feast, because he didn't slay the dragon on his own, his own way. Then the princess gets attacked by another dragon, and this time, she tells him that he'll have to poison the dragon, which he does...and that causes him to feel even more discouraged. Later, the knight hears more screams...only they're not coming from his princess, but from another princess. He goes to rescue her, feels validated because she didn't tell him what to do and he did it by himself, his own way, and ditched the first princess to live Happily Ever After with this new princess. What the reader was supposed to take from this is that it's best not to tell a man how to solve his problems...and that a woman being too outspoken can cause men to reject her or cheat because they feel rejected/discouraged/etc. However, this little parable does bring up some Fridge Logic: Namely, if that first princess knows how to slay the dragon, why doesn't she slay the dragon herself?! (Also, why does she keep getting attacked by one dragon after another in the first place?)

In User Unfriendly, the main quest of the game the heroes play is to rescue a princess, Dorinda, after she goes missing and a member of her Royal Guard is found slain by orc arrows. The princess actually turns out to be the Big Bad in the end.

In The Lost Princess Of Oz, Princess Ozma of Oz suddenly goes missing along with all of the most powerful artifacts of Oz. Search parties are organized to scour Oz for any sign of her. It turns out she was kidnapped by a shoemaker-turned-wizard named Ugu and imprisoned in a golden peach pit, which luckily one of the characters in the search party, Button-Bright, happens upon mid-way through the book, never knowing she was trapped inside until after the villain's defeat.

Live Action Television

Black Mirror: The National Anthem is a modern take on the trope, and Played for Drama. An English princess is kidnapped and the kidnapper has only one demand: the Prime Minister must have sex with a pig on live TV or she will be executed. He does go through with the deed, and worse, it turns out he didn't need to: the kidnapper was just a Mad Artist who planned the whole thing as a social commentary, and he had no intention of truly harming her.

Game of Thrones: A major motivation for Robert's Rebellion was to recover Lyanna Stark from Rhaegar Targaryen.

Kingdom Adventure: For most of the series, the Princess is kept in Lumia Castle, technically under the guard of Pitts (who is one of Zordock's minions), but she's still considered to be safe there. However, Zordock manages to steal the Princess's ring, kidnap her, and take her to the Dark Wood. Pokum, Gigag, Vibes, and Magistrate Kendrick in his Gulp-form go to rescue her.

In one episode of Red Dwarf, Ace Rimmer sky-surfs an alligator out of an exploding plane, steals a parachute from the baddie in mid-drop, and shoots up an entire base full of Nazis in order to rescue Princess Bonjella. What a guy!

In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman is captured by the Nazis and taken behind enemy lines. Steve disobeys the order to not go after her but obeys the order to take a vacation...so he can go rescue her. He arrives just after Wonder Woman escapes and gets captured himself

In "Judgement from Outer Space", Wonder Woman is hit by poison gas. Steve does get to take her to the hospital, but she fights off the poison herself.

The game that Radd is from in the webcomic Kid Radd has this plotline. Interestingly, due to the premise of game sprites as sentient beings who are created for the express purpose of being in games, Radd has no idea he even has a girlfriend until the narrator tells him so.

Swap out "Princess" with "CEO and former Magical Girl Warrior", and we've got the main plot for Last Res0rt. Of course, both halves of the rescuer/rescuee equation are female (and said Rescuee is reasonably capable of saving herself), so...

Thomas Sanderssubverts this in two of his Vines. In one, the villain admits that he loves Thomas and not the princess and is carried away by Thomas. In another, another princess knocks Thomas aside and saves the princess, then carries her away while Thomas and the villain watch in appreciation.

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